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Finding the Ways of Widening the Language Communicative Competence: Riddles in EFL Classroom

Abstract

Foreign language communicative competence as an important component of communicative culture is an integral part of student training. The modern context of language education is connected with a new view of the problems of interethnic, international communication, the important means of which is the English language. Particular interest in the problem of developing communication skills is observed in the field of foreign language teaching, where the main goal is the formation of foreign language communicative competence. In this regard, the efforts of researchers are aimed at improving the efficiency of the process of formation of foreign language communicative competence, as well as the organization of successful speech interactions. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the conditions for the formation of foreign language communicative competence based on linguistic and socio-cultural approaches, in particular the study of riddles. The key ways of texting English riddles reflect the cognitive features of English linguistic culture and are reduced to the metaphorization of the original values, the transformation of the perception of the object, recombination of its features, replacement of its usual notation by non-standard. The riddle immediately contains a task, an obstacle. Guessing is an action aimed at demonstrating the overcoming of these difficulties. In situational contexts, guessing riddles pursues different goals, uses different ways of text creation to achieve them. We can identify the main strategies of a foreign language puzzle, due to its functional purpose: heuristic, entertaining, and status. The most usual techniques to create a game effect of ambiguity of a riddle are based on homophony, homomorphism and their combination, homographs, manipulation of stress and pause, an associative blending of units of different language levels, syntax reversal, as well as literalization of idioms.

Keywords: ambiguity, foreign language communicative competence, formation, riddle